Friday, January 18, 2008

Nowadays I am reading the Book called “The Theory of Everything” by Stephen W.Hawking. It contains Stephen’s 6 lectures about Universe, Black holes, Origin of Universe, Time and finally the Theory of Everything. I am enjoying well …

In that book, in one place Stephen has pointed out (Here I am giving a summary in my words) until 1939 lot of the scientists was researching about Macro world things example: about Gravitational forces. But then due to the 2nd world war most of them were involved in Atomic bomb project and then after the war they have concentrated more on the micro world (I mean in the Atomic level)

Therefore if the 2nd world war is not happened, the scientists continued their researches on Macro world, about the Universe, Time, Relativity… They not much worried about the atomic world.

I think, because they have researched on the atomic world they were able to invent transistors. Without transistors we can’t talk about the computer age. So I think the 2nd world war made a change on our life and it led for the Computer Age 

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

I was walking around in a Target store, when I saw a Cashier hand this little boy some money back.

The boy couldn't have been more than 5 or 6 years old.The Cashier said, 'I'm sorry, but you don't have enough money to buy this doll.' Then the little boy turned to the old woman next to him: ''Granny, are you sure I don't have enough money?''

The old lady replied: ''You know that you don't have enough money to buy this doll, my dear.''Then she asked him to stay there for just 5 minutes while she went to look a round. She left quickly.The little boy was still holding the doll in his hand.

Finally, I walked toward him and I asked him who he wished to give this doll to.'It's the doll that my sister loved most and wanted so much for Christmas. She was sure that Santa Claus would bring it to her.'

I replied to him that maybe Santa Claus would bring it to her after all, and not to worry.

But he replied to me sadly. 'No, Santa Claus can't bring it to her where she is now. I have to give the doll to my mommy so that she can give it to my sister when she goes there.'

His eyes were so sad while saying this. 'My Sister has gone to be with God. Daddy says that Mommy is going to see God very soon too, so I thought that she could take the doll with her to give it to my sister.''

My heart nearly stopped.

The little boy looked up at me and said: 'I told daddy to tell mommy not to go yet. I need her to wait until I come back from the mall.'

Then he showed me a very nice photo of him where he was laughing. He then told me 'I want mommy to take my picture with her so she won't forget me.'

'I love my mommy and I wish she doesn't have to leave me, but daddy says that she has to go to be with my little sister.'

Then he looked again at the doll with sad eyes, very quietly.

I quickly reached for my wallet and said to the boy. 'Suppose we check again, just in case you do have enough money for the doll?''

'OK' he said, 'I hope I do have enough.' I added some of my money to his with out him seeing and we started to count it. There was enough for the doll and even some spare money.

The little boy said: 'Thank you God for giving me enough money!'

Then he looked at me and added, 'I asked last night before I went to sleep for God to make sure I had enough money to buy this doll, so that mommy could give It to my sister. He heard me!''

'I also wanted to have enough money to buy a white rose for my mommy, but I didn't dare to ask God for too much. But He gave me enough to buy the doll and a white rose.''

'My mommy loves white roses.'

A few minutes later, the old lady returned and I left with my basket.

I finished my shopping in a totally different state from when I started.

I couldn't get the little boy out of my mind.

Then I remembered a local news paper article two days ago, which mentioned a drunk man in a truck, who hit a car occupied by a young woman and a little girl.

The little girl died right away, and the mother was left in a critical state. The family had to decide whether to pull the plug on the life-sustaining machine, because the young woman would not be able to recover from the coma.

Was this the family of the little boy?

Two days after this encounter with the little boy, I read in the news paper that the young woman had passed away.

I couldn't stop myself as I bought a bunch of white roses and I went to the funeral home where the body of the young woman was exposed for people to see and make last wishes before her burial.

She was there, in her coffin, holding a beautiful white rose in her hand with the photo of the little boy and the doll placed over her chest.

I left the place, teary-eyed, feeling that my life had been changed for ever.. The love that the little boy had for his mother and his sister is still, to this day, hard to imagine.

And in a fraction of a second, a drunk driver had taken all this away from him.

Friday, January 4, 2008

Today I tried, but couldnt get the String theory, but found following description. Worth reading....

The language of physics is mathematics. In order to study physics seriously, one needs to learn mathematics that took generations of brilliant people centuries to work out. Algebra, for example, was cutting-edge mathematics when it was being developed in Baghdad in the 9th century. But today it's just the first step along the journey.

Algebra

Algebra provides the first exposure to the use of variables and constants, and experience manipulating and solving linear equations of the form y = ax + b and quadratic equations of the form y = ax2+bx+c.

Geometry

Geometry at this level is two-dimensional Euclidean geometry, Courses focus on learning to reason geometrically, to use concepts like symmetry, similarity and congruence, to understand the properties of geometric shapes in a flat, two-dimensional space.

Trigonometry

Trigonometry begins with the study of right triangles and the Pythagorean theorem. The trigonometric functions sin, cos, tan and their inverses are introduced and clever identities between them are explored.

Calculus (single variable)

Calculus begins with the definition of an abstract functions of a single variable, and introduces the ordinary derivative of that function as the tangent to that curve at a given point along the curve. Integration is derived from looking at the area under a curve,which is then shown to be the inverse of differentiation.

Calculus (multivariable)

Multivariable calculus introduces functions of several variables f(x,y,z...), and students learn to take partial and total derivatives. The ideas of directional derivative, integration along a path and integration over a surface are developed in two and three dimensional Euclidean space.

Analytic Geometry

Analytic geometry is the marriage of algebra with geometry. Geometric objects such as conic sections, planes and spheres are studied by the means of algebraic equations. Vectors in Cartesian, polar and spherical coordinates are introduced.

Linear Algebra

In linear algebra, students learn to solve systems of linear equations of the form ai1 x1 + ai2 x2 + ... + ain xn = ci and express them in terms of matrices and vectors. The properties of abstract matrices, such as inverse, determinant, characteristic equation, and of certain types of matrices, such as symmetric, antisymmetric, unitary or Hermitian, are explored.

Ordinary Differential Equations

This is where the physics begins! Much of physics is about deriving and solving differential equations. The most important differential equation to learn, and the one most studied in undergraduate physics, is the harmonic oscillator equation, ax'' + bx' + cx = f(t), where x' means the time derivative of x(t).

Partial Differential Equations

For doing physics in more than one dimension, it becomes necessary to use partial derivatives and hence partial differential equations. The first partial differential equations students learn are the linear, separable ones that were derived and solved in the 18th and 19th centuries by people like Laplace, Green, Fourier, Legendre, and Bessel.

Methods of approximation

Most of the problems in physics can't be solved exactly in closed form. Therefore we have to learn technology for making clever approximations, such as power series expansions, saddle point integration, and small (or large) perturbations.

Probability and statistics

Probability became of major importance in physics when quantum mechanics entered the scene. A course on probability begins by studying coin flips, and the counting of distinguishable vs. indistinguishable objects. The concepts of mean and variance are developed and applied in the cases of Poisson and Gaussian statistics.

Now we all know that, birth rate is higher than death rate...Therefore human mass is increasing over time and according to the Einstein's famous equation, E=MC2, energy requirement is also increasing. So this increasing amount of energy should be borrowed from nature. But the energy reaching to the Earth is constant (Via Sun and various cosmic rays).In addition to that, the spaceships also take a lot of energy to outside the earth...